Create Louvered Doors with Parametric Louvers

[awilliams]

I'm building a louvered door family. Instead of a solid panel in the door I want louvers. There will be more or less louvers depending on the height of the door, and of course the louvers need to match the width of the door.

When I try to create an array of my louver extrusion, the constraints seem to not function correctly. All I want to do is to constrain the left and right side of the louvers to the "stiles" of the door, but as soon as I group the louver extrusion, the constraints no longer funtion.

How does one constrain objects within a group? Am I missing something?
Thanks
Andrew

[twiceroadsfool]

Has to be a nested family. You cant the items in an array parametric like that if theyre not a nested family...

[sbrown]

Do you really need modeled louvers? I use a solid extrusion with a horizontal surface pattern on it. Works like a charm and you can still make a rendering material that looks like louvers.

[twiceroadsfool]

Depends on how picky the designers are. I used the solid extrusion method, and when they turned on the shadows i got gripes that the shadows ran straight across the louvers, LOL.

I took the performance hit and built them a standard "louver" panel to put in doors/windows if they want it. Still doesnt show up at Coarse LOD anyway, and it helped make the case for better Hardware, hahahaha...

[DaveP]

Check out the DesignReForm blog.
They just finished a 4-part video tutorial on how to make louvers.
http://designreform.net/2009/09/para...system-part-1/
Perfect timing!

[Joshua Kohl]

The following is a good example from Chris Price (aka Mr Spot)

http://www.cadway.com.au/Signatures/...LIESARRAYS.pdf